Assessment of the level of economic development of Polish voivodships by means of linear ordering methods in the dynamic approach

Abstract

The research on the economic development of voivodships is important in the context of the policy of levelling regional disparities and has been necessitated by the fact the disproportions in the level of the economic development of Polish voivodships have persisted for years. The main aim of this study was to determine the direction and scope of changes affecting the level of economic development of particular voivodships. To this end, the study used linear ordering methods in the dynamic approach. The additional aim, of the methodological nature, was to compare two methods of the normalisation of variables – the Strahl quotient transformation and the zero unitarisation method. The research was conducted on the basis of relevant data from Statistics Poland’s Local Data Bank database for the years 2010–2020. The results of the study include the calculation of the synthetic measure of the level of development of Polish voivodships in the studied period, the compilation of the relevant ranking of the voivodships, and the comparison of changes thereof. The performed analysis demonstrated that all the voivodships developed economically in the examined period, but the changes took place at a different pace and the disparities between them remained. The indicator of economic development grew to the largest extent in the voivodships which were already the most developed in economic terms, i.e. in the Mazowieckie, Dolnośląskie, Wielkopolskie and Małopolskie voivodships. Both of the applied methods of the variable normalisation led to similar conclusions. The differences between them concerned the value of the development level indicator, and affected to some degree the assessment of the scope and direction of changes, along with the assessment of the distance between the objects.